Tom Kondrat

Tom Kondrat was born in Warsaw, Poland and studied in London. The son of two freelance photographers, photography is in Tom’s blood. At the age of 12 his first image was purchased and published by a travel magazine. More than 10 years later, Tom returned to his first love, abandoning a financial computing education in favor of a camera. Tom currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. Today we share his series Typhoon Blues.

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Typhoon Blues

When living in Europe, I only heard about typhoons from the TV news. So once I moved to Taiwan and was told that one of them is actually ‘coming’, I had mixed feelings. In my mind there were all these images of destruction combained with the dry facts about the numbers of casualties and millions of dollars lost due to damage. All these stories made typhoons sound very dangerous but at the same time there was something mysterious and exciting about them. So when the first typhoon in the season hit Taiwan last year, I decided to check it by myself and experience it with my camera. I discovered a different, more poetic and beautiful side of this natural phenomenon which I would like to show in this project.

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While there is this eerie kind of calm before typhoon, at the same time there are a lot of things happening. There are crazy dogs running on the beaches like on drugs, stressed fishermen having last few moments to secure their boats and nets, random people observing the sea or taking few snapshots of the waves and the coast guards trying to move them away from the danger zones secured by the ‘crime scene – do not pass’ style tapes. The strong wind, heavy waves, the smell and the sound of the sea, almost magical energy and the constant feeling of danger make this time really special for me. And in the middle of all this, as if inside of the typhoon’s eye, there is this ever present stillness – so hard to notice in everyday life.

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To view more of Tom’s work please visit his website.